


the lindworm

by blue-plums (arabesque05)



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2019-09-21 07:04:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17039033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabesque05/pseuds/blue-plums
Summary: “but you know this story already,” mama says, as sarada climbs into bed that night. but she smiles and tells the story again anyway.





	the lindworm

“But you know this story already,” mama says, as Sarada climbs into bed that night. But she smiles and tells the story again anyway.

It’s true. Sarada has heard the story before, many times in its many variations: how the maiden held onto the lindworm though it thrashed and bled and sloughed off its scales; how the human girl held onto an elfin knight, though he turned in all manner of beasts and fire. Mama likes telling stories about heroines with strong arms.

“And braveness of heart, and perseverance of will,” adds mama, smoothing Sarada’s bed covers and kissing Sarada’s forehead.

And for many many years, Sarada thinks that is the point of these stories. How the maiden trusted, and had faith, and endured.

* * *

When her father comes home –- her father, with his strange eyes; her father, who sees things no one else can see; her father, who had been gone many years in a strange land –- when her father comes home, Sarada is determined to hold on. However distant he is and however angry she is, it doesn’t matter. Her father is home. Sarada thinks: strong arms, brave heart, perseverance of will.

Whoever this stranger is, he is her father underneath the years and years they spent apart. She will hold onto him, and he will be restored to her as he was –- tall and handsome and strong, her papa.

* * *

She follows him around the house, asks him about the deserts to the west and the archipelagos to the east, what color the skies are and how strong the sun and how heavy the rain. “And when you are not in this world –- or dimension, I do not  understand the particulars -– what is it like? In that … place?”

“It is not like here,” he answers placidly.

Sarada stares at him. The muscles in her arms tighten. She perseveres, “How so?”

He looks up from the ironing. Her father, who apparently has not lived under a roof in more than a decade; the family iron, which has not seen use in about as long. All romanticism aside, Sarada has a fairly good idea how her parents’ marriage worked.

Now he says, with a sort of terrible simplicity, “Well, you are here. And your mother.”

“And that is better?” presses Sarada. She regrets the words immediately. How apparent her desire is –- how gaping and wanting and unseemly her heart.

Her father tilts his head and considers her with his mismatched eyes, as if she is something both curious and very small. The hot iron hisses with steam against the fabric of her mother’s surgical scrubs. She wonders if there is any point in ironing those.

Eventually, he answers, “Yes,“ –- as lightly as her academy instructors had taught her to fall. The same soft tumbling grace; a cat landing on its feet.

* * *

She follows him to the farmer’s market, early one weekend, when it is still gray-dark outside. Coming out the front door into the cool morning air, Sarada rubs at one eye sleepily, and with her other hand holds onto the tail of her father’s shirt. He looks down at her with some bemusement.

“What if you lose me?” she asks, though that is not what she means. That is not her worry. It is the wrong order of words.

He offers her his hand. “No, no,” says Sarada; he has only the one, after all, and needs it for however it is people buy vegetables. Sarada is not quite sure. Sarada grew up on a diet of hospital food and restaurant takeout.

The farmer’s market is in the square in front of the Hokage tower. This early in the morning, it is already bustling and crowded, full of housewives and restaurant apprentices and grandfathers out for their morning walk. Her father goes around the stalls. He pokes at the fish and squeezes king oyster mushrooms and smells strawberries; he passes Sarada a slice of peach sample and asks her if it is sweet enough.

“Sasuke-kun!” calls one grandmother, who has a tub full of crayfish to her left and a bucket of sea urchins to her right. She waves, brisk and cheerful, a woman who is expecting good business.

“Hello, grandmother,” says Sarada’s father, with a kind of quiet familiarity Sarada has never heard from him before. He does not exactly smile; he does not exactly refuse to smile.

“I heard you were back,” says the grandmother. “But look how thin you are! I’ve saved some sea urchins for you, come see –- Sakura-chan’s favorite, isn’t it? But she’s at the hospital all the time, still, and you not around to look after her.”

Her father bends over and inspects the sea urchins, dark purple and spiny. “Sarada,” he says, absently, “say hello to grandmother.”

“Hello, grandmother,” says Sarada and marvels: how normal it should be, her father telling her to greet an elder. And yet this is the first time.

“Why, is this Warada-chan?” exclaims the grandmother. “Last time I saw you, you were this tall –-” waving a hand around knee-level “–- but you’re so grown-up now!”

Sarada blinks, surprised. She looks at her father, still frowning in concentration at the sea urchins. So he had brought her here before –- when she had been too young to remember. Her grip on his shirt tightens.

“Oh, Sasuke-kun, it is too bad,” clucks the grandmother. “You were away for so long.”

“Yes,” says her father. He turns his head and returns Sarada’s gaze –- bent over as he is, they are almost of a height. His is a man’s face, of course, and his cheekbones are higher and his nose stronger –- but his eyes are familiar: the same eyes she sees in the mirror, large and slightly too dark. No one else in the world has eyes like theirs.

Then he straightens, stretching long like a shadow at sunset. “But I am back now,” he says, and then, “What do you think, grandmother? –- These are fresh from this morning? Sakura likes it raw –-”

“Well, of course they’re fresh! Sakura-chan has it right –- is there any other way to eat sea urchins?” and her father agrees, and next several minutes are spent choosing the urchins. Then grandmother adds some cucumbers to their bag, “Very crisp, from all the rains last week,” as a gift, she says, a homecoming present. Because she is glad of Sasuke-kun’s return and because it will pair well with the sea urchins.

“Thank you,” says Sarada’s father, taking the bag. “I am glad to see you well, grandmother.”

Pink and pleased, grandmother shoos them off. She has other customers.

Sarada follows her father home, half a pace behind him. She stares up at his profile, sharp against the autumn sky. Her father, who goes grocery shopping at the farmer’s market; her father, who buys sea urchins for her mother; her father, who the market vendors call Sasuke-kun with such familiarity, as if the absence of ten years were no more than a weekend away –-

He is not rusted with foreign rains, thinks Sarada: he needs no restoration. He is as he ever was -– and she has no name for what rises in her throat, relief or grief.

* * *

Her father makes breakfast. It is a thing he does, consistently, every morning.

The first time, Sarada, who is not in the habit of eating breakfast, stares in some confusion at the rice and miso soup and grilled mackerel laid out for her on the dining table. “It’s a little earlier for lunch?” she suggests.

Her father stares back in equal confusion. “It’s breakfast,” he tells her.

“Ah,” says Sarada.

“Do you not eat breakf –- “ but he is already rising from the table, calling, “Sakura!” and heading down the hall to poke his head into the bathroom where her mother is showering. Possibly he wants to pick a fight about the importance of childhood nutrition –- as if Haruno Sakura were not the foremost medical authority in Konoha. The sound of running water drowns out their conversation. Sarada picks up her chopsticks. Well, he won’t get anywhere with  _that_ conversation: her mother’s not coherent until after three cups of coffee on any given morning.

The mackerel is good –- but, Sakura is beginning to learn, she might have expected that. Her father made it, after all.

* * *

There is some debate among her mother and grandparents as to what Sarada’s first memory is: falling into a decorative koi pond; sharing ice cream with Chou-Chou; Boruto bursting into terrified tears at the prospect of becoming an older brother.

Sarada has nothing to contribute to this debate. She has so little context for her early memories that it is impossible to date them. Besides, she suspects none of the suggested choices are correct.

There is a shade of red brighter than blood, like no red Sarada has ever seen, yet she knows the color of it. Then one day her father had stood before her in the path of incoming weapons and opened his eyes and Sarada had thought in startled recognition,  _Ah_. She knew that color –- but of course she knew. It was a memory.

* * *

Her father is home so often now that Sarada begins to think he is on some sort of leave from active duty. He spends his days folding laundry and vacuuming the floors and cooking dinners with at least three different vegetables. He packs bentos for Sarada and her mother. He washes the bedsheets and hangs them outside to dry in the sunlight. He scrubs the bathtub. He washes the windows. He replaces the batteries in the fire detectors. The house has never been so clean.

So Sarada is surprised to come home from the academy one afternoon to find her father putting plastic wrap over dishes food. A small travel bag sits by the front door.

Dismay settles in Sarada’s chest like a piece of ice. “Are you -– ?” She does not want to say it.

He puts the food in the fridge, tells her he’s left heating instructions on the kitchen counter. “On the stove, now. Don’t let your mother microwave everything.”

“Papa,” says Sarada, despairingly.

He understands. He comes over to where she stands, still in her street shoes, by the front door. “Not for very long,” he says, bending down. “Just a few days. I will be back soon.”

He smiles at her a little -– not a very good smile; crooked, off balance, a cat in water. His hand is warm when he reaches forward to tuck a loose lock of hair behind her ear.

“All right,” says Sarada. She looks up at him, the awkwardness of his smile and the placidity of his expression despite that. He is always so calm. Sarada cannot reconcile him with her mother’s stories of their genin cell -– how angry Sasuke-kun had been, her mother used to reminisce, how bereft and despairing and helplessly, fumblingly kind.

Sarada’s father is not so. There is no great tragedy in his air. He never seems to regret his arm. Even now, in uniform, he does not look like … like jounin or ANBU or  _dangerous_. He looks like he might tell her to wash whites and colors separately and to not use metal on non-stick.

“All right,” says Sarada, again. She tells him, “I know how to reheat on the stove; I’ll do it. Mom doesn’t –- she’s -–”

“Yes,” his eyes smile at her. It is a much better smile.

“She’s busy,” says Sarada defensively.

“Saving lives,” agrees her father. He draws a thumb over her chin. “Be brave,” he tells her –-  _There is no need_ , Sarada wants to protest, flushing and embarrassed and pleased -– “Be good,” he says, “look after your mother,” and picks up his bag, stands, skirts his way around her, leaves. The door latches behind him with a quiet  _snick_.

Sarada stands still for several moments. The house is quiet around her, but for the quiet hum of the refrigerator, the rustle of curtains from an open window in the living room, her own heartbeat. The afternoon is still young: sunlight spills into the kitchen from the window over the sink. Sarada goes over to the counter and sees: her father’s handwriting, scrawled on the back of an envelope of some electric bill from several months ago.  _How casual!_  she thinks and is startled into laughter. They are not instructions after all; only suggestions in passing, a comfortable assurance in her ability to know what to do.

* * *

“Girls night in!” declares her mother that night, coming in through the front door. “Popcorn for dinner! And ice cream! And leave the dishes in the sink, fuck it, what’s the worst that can happen? I don’t believe the gunk is  _so chemically bonded -_ –”

“ _Mom_ ,” protests Sarada. 

She’s already heating cauliflower in a pan.

“No, why, he’s  _turned you_ ,how can you –- ugh,  _vegetables_. I’m going to change, don’t burn the house down,” says her mother, disappearing down the hall as Sarada yells after her, “ _That’s you_!”

* * *

As he had promised, it is only a few days. He comes home later that week, smelling only like the autumn chill outside.

“Mom’s still at the hospital,” Sarada tells him. She had been at the kitchen table, homework spread out in front of her; now she stands up, pushes the chair back, and suddenly, she feels shy; her father, her father –- she does not know if she should go to him.

He takes off his shoes, smiles that awkward smile at her. “Yes,” he tells her, “I had her patch me up first.”

“Are you hurt?” Sarada compromises by going to the sink, filling a kettle with water to boil for tea.

“No, no, nothing serious,” he tells her. “Homework?”

“Mm,” Sarada agrees. She watches as he pads through the kitchen in the living room, not turning on the light as he goes -– he stops at the bottom of the staircase, looks down at himself, and seems to sigh. He goes back into the living room, by the coffee table, and starts to disarm –- takes off the flak jacket and then pulls out knives from where they had been secured on his body. He lays the weapons on the coffee table, in neat rows.

“Have you had dinner?” he asks over his shoulder.

“Not yet,” answers Sarada. “I was going to, if mom’s not back by eight.”

“Let’s make something and take it over,” he says. “Hospital looked pretty busy when I was there earlier.”

“Yeah, okay,” says Sarada. In the living room, her father finishes disarming and turns; the weapons arrayed on the table gleam like scales in the moonlight, and for a moment her father is only a tall shadow against the window, lithe and silent like death; then, he steps into the kitchen, and he is her father again, in soft incandescent light.

“What do you want for dinner?” he asks.

* * *

When the lake at the park down the street freezes over that winter, her father bundles them up in sweaters and jackets and scarves and takes her there.

They leave after breakfast. Sarada stares up at the sky, still dark like night. She breathes in, the winter air stinging her nose. She feels like the entire world is holding its breath, like the early morning is a secret between her and her father. “I guess I get my morning-bird genes from you, huh?”

He casts her an amused glance. “Well,” he says, “you sure didn’t get them from your mom.”

“Well,” allows Sarada, “mom was up late last night.”

“She was on call,” agrees her father.

They walk in silence for a while.

“She used to tell me bedtime stories,” Sarada says suddenly, surprising herself. “I don’t know where she found the time -– but she told me all sorts: heroes and princesses and dragons and –- and elves and the lindworm –- ”

She looks at her father. She must have inherited his eyes too, because even in the low light, his face is clear, as calm as ever, listening carefully.

“I used to think,” confesses Sarada, like a secret, like a winter morning, “that if I were brave and true and held onto you, tightly -– ”

What did she used to think? She cannot find the words, only the memory of some unspeakable longing, a lingering ache in her chest. She laughs, a little stiltedly, says, “Well. I don’t know. Mom likes her heroines to have strong arms.”

“Mm,” says her father, quietly. “Because she’s so strong herself.”

They arrive at the lake. Her father takes her to a little pier, ice climbing its way up the pillars. They stand there some moments, surveying the frozen water in front of them.

“You are,” her father says suddenly: in the same rush as she had, like a secret, like a winter morning: “You are,” he says again, looking at her, “brave and true and –- splendid.” He smiles, still like a cat in water, ungraceful, stumbling –-  _Ah_ , remembers Sarada,  _helplessly, fumblingly kind_.

“Your mother’s daughter,” he says -– and then they both have to look away, unused to such emotional honesty. She is not entirely her mother’s daughter, supposes Sarada.

“Papa,” she says.

He turns back to her. The sun is coming up over the horizon, the first peek of light. He tells her, “Start with the tiger seal. Then the ram, and focus your breath in your lungs –- ”

* * *

He is her father, he tells her. She does not need to hold onto him. He’ll stay.


End file.
